


your desk might catch on fire

by sandyk



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Lovers to rivals, MJ learns what hyphy is, Rivals to Lovers, handwavey post FFH, minus the identity reveal thing in FFH, reference to serious injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk
Summary: After Peter and MJ break up and go to college on different coasts, MJ considers Peter her rival. In her head. Lovers to rivals. Maybe to lovers again?
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: Trope Bingo: Round Fifteen





	your desk might catch on fire

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, no profit garnered. For the trope bingo spot rivals to lovers. Title from the story's when two and two are five. Thank you A!!!

More like lovers to rivals, MJ thought. Now that she and Peter had split up, MJ had decided he was her rival. In the game of life. Peter had a lot to overcome, he was Spider-man. And an orphan and traumatized. Mostly, though, he was Spider-man. MJ had her own obstacles. So she measured herself against him. She was going to do better. 

MJ was in college at UC Berkeley. She liked the school and she was adapting to the west coast. Actually, she didn't think much of all the actual hippies and assholes in Berkeley, but she really liked Oakland. Once she got past the crunchy white liberals there were great people living there. 

She had a great freshman year. MJ was getting great grades. She made friends. She mastered the BART and the bus system, she could go anywhere. Sometimes she even went to stupid San Francisco but San Francisco was the worst. Give her weekends on Lake Merritt any day. 

She was an activist, too. Peter was saving the world, and MJ was doing that, too. Just on a smaller scale. She went to protests, she met like-minded people, she made calls, she marched. She did sit-ins, too. She brought care packages to unhoused encampments and also sat in on city council meetings. 

She kept track of her rival, too. Peter still had her friended on social media, even on the accounts he kept private. She was still besties with Ned, where she actually commented and he commented on hers. She casually followed May, too. 

Peter, ever the over achiever academically, graduated M.I.T. in three years. His more private insta account had pictures with Pepper and Morgan and Sam Wilson, too. Wilson was looking pretty fine. All the pictures of Ned and May were on the more public social media, but he did plaster that one with graduation pictures, too. May bragged about Peter getting his PhD at Columbia and how happy she was he was back in New York. 

MJ took four years. But she was going to graduate with honors. Just like Peter. She decided as an activist and a person, she wanted to be an OBGYN. She was going to be a doctor. She got in to Stanford. And a magic grant appeared from the September Foundation without MJ even applying for one. She also got sweet notes from Pepper and May when she graduated. Ned sent a whole ass Visa gift card, with fifty dollars on it. 

She partied with her friends and she got her own place in Oakland. It cost more than a place in fucking Williamsburg and was as tiny as a dorm room. It was still hers. She had long commutes for studying, on BART and buses listening to podcasts. She excelled. She was great at school, she was good at medicine. So many of her fellow students were also total assholes with no ability for empathy. She was going to smoke all of them in particular. 

Peter was going great, too, damn little genius. Not that she needed more impetus to excel. She had spite and a will like nobody's business. 

One day, she looked down at her phone and she had an alert from twitter. She clicked past the warning box to a photo. Bad guys got Spider-man in Central Park. It was Peter. Spider-man was splayed on the ground, there was so much blood and she could see bone. There was a hole the size of two fists in his gut. She could catalog the injuries and it didn't look good, just from what she could see. But Peter could heal better than anyone. 

Then Falcon swept in and carefully flew away with Peter. There were pictures of that, too. It had been an hour ago. In an hour, he could have died. Except he was Peter and that would never happen. 

Her fellow students started sitting down around her. "Dude, Spider-man," one of them said. 

"He's a good guy," MJ said. She was frightened to realize her voice broke.

"You're from New York City, right? Did he save your life or something?" 

MJ said, "He's a good guy." 

"Was a good guy, look at that break -"

"Fuck you," MJ said as she got up. She was not hanging out with these assholes. 

Not that she could do anything. She didn't want to bother the people who would know. She texted Ned that she loved him and was thinking of him. She thought about texting May but she didn't know what she would say, exactly, and she didn't want to bother anyone. 

So she got to wait. Like everyone else. She browsed through all of Peter's social media to make herself feel bad. He had lots of pictures, he loved taking pictures. She could track everyone he'd dated since her. She didn't go back to look at what he'd posted when they were together. She remembered. 

He hadn't been seeing anyone lately. No one serious. There were more pics of Ned, now graduated from M.I.T. as well, also at Columbia. She'd seen Peter in Ned's stories, and May's stories. Obviously neither of them had updated in the past hour and a half. Peter clearly had something set to auto post, there was a picture of a pigeon on top of a building that popped up forty-five minutes after Peter was hurt. 

She took a deep breath and another deep breath. Her phone buzzed and it was Ned. Ned said, "They think he's going to live. They think. But you know, it's Peter."

"Yeah, it is," she said. "How are you doing? Sorry this is like the first time we talked in forever."

"No, it's okay, I feel like we talk. We had that whole conversation about your, um, last week? On twitter," Ned said He sounded stressed. 

"Want to talk about anything else?"

Ned laughed a little. He said, "Yeah. Sure. How's med school?"

"The people who want to become doctors mostly shouldn't be allowed anywhere near patients, it's like that," MJ said.

She talked to him for a few minutes more. Then she let him go. She tried to study. She read the same few pages more than once. It was so stupid. She literally hadn't seen Peter in person for years. She hadn't talked to him for the same amount of time. 

Also, she used to be in love with him. He was Spider-man, too. 

Eventually, in a few hours, she heard Peter was one hundred per cent okay. Or definitely going to be one hundred per cent okay. She texted May just to send her love. 

Peter did get better and Spider-man was back out there. MJ kicked medical school's ass. 

She graduated in the top of her class. She got very nice notes from Pepper and May again. And Ned. She got her match. She was heading back to New York City. 

She didn't see Peter for a whole week. Then, of course, she was walking out of the hospital, exhausted at the horrible hours, thought she saw Spider-man out of the corner of her eye. She turned around to see him, but he wasn't there. Then she turned again and of course again, Peter was standing there in his jeans and tee shirt. She said, "Why shouldn't I punch you in the face?"

"Because I just showed up and didn't do anything?" He grinned at her. "Also we both know I'd just dodge and you'd look ridiculous."

"Only because I'm exhausted, it's the first week of my residency, asshole," MJ said. 

"You get to deliver babies yet?"

"I already did, when I was a med student," MJ said. "And I've also done some this week. It's fun."

"Delivering babies is fun," Peter said. "That's an interesting take."

"I'm not the one the baby is coming out of," MJ said. She started walking towards her subway station. "This city is worse than San Francisco, you know, rent wise, I almost had to live in New Jersey. "

"Where are you living?"

"Honestly? Subletting from my mother's boss," MJ said. "I didn't have very long to look, okay?"

"Staten Island," Peter said, with a big smile. "You're living on Staten Island. I'm so sorry."

"Shut up," MJ said, waving her hand. 

Typical Peter, he literally followed her home. He told her about his schedule, how close he was to his double PhD (very close), the classes he was teaching, the usual. He even walked her to her door. 

"I do, I want to thank you," she said. "Having you as my rival in my head really pushed me to be better. And my own smarts."

"You're very smart," he said. "You didn't need me." He was so matter of fact. 

"Duh," MJ said.

She was very busy. Her work hours were insane, by design. Despite many reforms. She needed to rest. She needed to stay up on the latest research. She did all of that. She had lunch with May, they resolved to make it monthly going forward. She had a quick hang with Pepper, also resolved to make it monthly. She got back to her old activist spaces and some new ones. She even hung out with her friends from her old neighborhood and met some new ones. 

She tried to convince her coworkers of her basic humanity so they'd see it in people who looked like her. It was a fun thing she'd been having to do her entire damn life, she always wondered how much more she could be doing if she wasn't young, gifted and Black. 

She thought she'd managed it with at least two fellow doctors and three nurses. 

"Maybe I should be a nurse," she dm'd Peter.

"More direct day to day patient connection: pro," Peter replied. "Waste of education so far: con."

She talked to Peter in some fashion every day. It was the worst. She had friends, work, activism. Peter had the same. She had more friends, possibly. She should stop competing with her ex. Current friend. She thought he was beating on her on the romantic and/or sexual front. He didn't have anyone serious, but he'd gotten laid at once in the past month. She hadn't. 

So it was a month and she had a rare night to sleep at her place and not the hospital, when she heard a knock on the window. "Well," she said, pushing it open. 

Peter jumped in and took off his suit. "Sorry. Some bad guy was following me, I think, so I thought, hey, no one would think I lived out on Staten Island, right?"

"So lead the bad guy to my place?"

"No, I already lost him. But I was already here so I thought. How about some sleep? Do you have a couch?"

MJ frowned again. "Clearly, you can see I don't. I have a studio apartment. There's room on the bed, whatever. I need my sleep, too."

She reached out to touch him as he got in bed. He had a scar. On his perfect tight abs. "You don't scar."

"Sometimes I do," Peter said, getting in next to her. "I mean, I almost died, and it was a really big hole. It actually fades every year, it used to be bigger."

MJ said, "Oh, I remember. You could see your intestines. It was so gross."

Peter said, "Yeah, not my favorite pictures of Spider-man. It was pretty gory."

MJ turned on her side away from him. "I'm glad you didn't die."

"Thank you," Peter said. 

She slept well, for once. She actually had a honest to God day off so she hadn't even set an alarm. Peter was pressed against her back. It was weird, they'd never spent the night together back before. They were in high school. Now they were adults. "Hey, Peter."

"I'm awake," he said, like that's something that just happened. 

She wiggled closer to him. 

"Hmm, I need you to say it," Peter said. "I like clear permission."

She leaned back into him. "Peter, at some point in the next hour I plan to be riding your dick reverse cowgirl style so I can reach around and finger your sweet ass."

"You know," he said, holding her waist, "I'm glad you waited to say that because if you'd said that when I was sixteen, I'd already be done."

"If you were sixteen, you'd be ready to go again pretty quick."

"I'm not in my fifties," Peter said, his hand on the underside of her breast. "I can still get back in action pretty quick. I can show you."

"Yeah," MJ said. "I hope you do." Ugh, lovers to rivals to lovers. She was pathetic and cliche. Except she was in a good mood because, well, Peter.


End file.
